Nebraska senior Gina Mancuso is ready to bear down on the final weeks of her Husker career.

Photo by Scott Bruhn/Nebraska Communications

Mancuso Remembers, Fortifies 2011 Quote

By NU Athletic Communications

| 11/29/2012

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Has it reallybeen a year since Kansas State shocked
Nebraska in a 5-set, 2nd-round NCAA volleyball match at the NU Coliseum? Husker fans remember how numbing that was, especially for a certain
first-team All-American outside hitter who had 25 kills and 17 digs in a rare
Husker home loss.

“I promise you that we’re going to come out
fighting next year, and I promise you that our season won’t end like this,”
Gina Mancusosaid at the time, vowing in Tim Tebow
fashion, that no individual and no team was going to work harder to prevent
something like that from happening again.

“Do I remember saying that? Yes, I do,” Mancuso said
Wednesday before following up with an impromptu update. “Our motivation and our
work ethic for this weekend started a year ago after we lost that match. We can
honestly say that we’ve done everything we can do almost every day since that
loss. We’re all excited. It’s a great opportunity to have K-State (first and
second round) and Washington (Omaha regional) in our bracket. That
provides a lot of motivation on top of the motivation we already
had.”

While Mancuso is hoping the Huskers can gain some
measure of revenge the second time around, she knows the sheer mention of that
word is a confession of pain, and that’s okay, along as everything is kept in
proper perspective. Nebraska Coach John Cookhas been around long enough to know that
before anyone decides to embark on a journey of revenge, someone should dig two
graves.

The Huskers, however, are “in a much better place than
we were last year,” Cook said. “We were just hanging on last year … hanging on
trying to win that conference. I think we were worn out. It wasn’t necessarily
volleyball wear-out. It was just a long, draining season for our first year in
the Big Ten.”

Mancuso said then and still believes now that K-State
wanted that second-round win that punched a ticket to a regional in Hawaii more
than Nebraska wanted it. As tempting as it is to look ahead, Mancuso said the
No. 4-seeded Huskers must focus on Thursday’s first-round foe, Maryland Eastern
Shore.

“We’re so much better prepared this year,” Mancuso
said, admitting that an Omaha regional gives the Huskers extra incentive to play
four matches in Nebraska to reach the National Semifinals in Louisville. Mancuso
still remembers her 2009 freshman season when the Huskers squandered a similar
opportunity. Nebraska swept Coastal Carolina and Northern Iowa in Lincoln and
swept Iowa State in Omaha before losing to Texas in the regional final and
failing to qualify for the National Semifinals.

For Mancuso and her teammates, revenge isn’t the right
word to describe what they want to accomplish in the next two weekends. Resolve
is a more accurate description of the Huskers’ psychological makeup for NCAA
Tourney Time. Resolve, after all, was at the root of Mancuso’s 2011 post-match
vow, and that resolution will remain ingrained in her mind until the Huskers
wind up in Louisville.